Update:West Georgia Honor Flight veterans get big welcome home from area residents
Hundreds gathered at the Columbus Metropolitan Airport tonight to welcome home area World War II veterans from today's West Georgia Honor Flight, which touched down at 10:37 p.m.
Crowds cheers and waved signs as the veterans walked under a banner that said "Welcome Home Heroes."
The veterans were returning from a day of bright, windy weather in Washington, D.C., where they arrived about 10 a.m. to visit the World War II memorial, and then memorials to Vietnam and Korea, and a Marine Corps monument made in the iconic image of Marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima, and then Arlington.
Looks of shock and gratitude spread across the weary heroes’ faces as they shuffled one by one through the Columbus Metropolitan Airport terminal late Friday night.
All around were people — People waving American flags; people clutching colorful banners; people cheering. And it was all for them.
According to Columbus airport police estimates a crowd of between 1,200 and 1,400 jammed the airport to welcome these men and women home and to pay tribute to their service and sacrifice.
Liz Land, a volunteer at the National Infantry Museum and Soldier Center, attended last year’s homecoming. Being there when the veterans got off the plane was an experience that she had trouble putting into words.
“It was slam packed. It was fantastic,” Land said of last year’s event. “You can’t help but get caught up in all of it and the band and the volunteers. I mean it’s just neat. Everybody should do this one time, just one time.”
As the veterans slowly navigated the long receiving line through the airport terminal, volunteers offered them American flags, hugs and handshakes. Children yelled, “Thank you” at the top of their lungs and the Northside High School marching band played a patriotic selection.
“Wonderful,” said Honor Flight veteran Ellis Smith when he encountered the crowd. “You just don’t know how to express it. It’s just so good to see people out like this.”
Another veteran, Isaac Evans, stopped in front of the screaming throng and saluted.
Veteran James Harris said, “This is great.”
Tim Zabel, band director for the Northside High School marching band, said he brought his students back for its second Honor Flight homecoming rally performance to expose them to true patriots and the men and women who support them.
“It’s a wonderful opportunity for our kids to honor World War II veterans,” Zabel said. “They also get to see people who are here honoring people that fought 60 years ago for our freedom and I think they can relate it to what’s going on in Afghanistan and Iraq and other parts of the country and it brings it home. It’s a great community event. And the patriotism, I mean we are the (Northside) Patriots so it all ties together.”
Connor and Carson French, the great grandsons of Arthur Ferrell, a WWII veteran and Honor Flight participant, held a poster that read, “We love our great grandpa!”
Paul Kilpatrick, one of the escorts or "guardians" on today's Honor Flight, said he decided to volunteer for that duty after witnessing a homecoming last September. He said it was among the most "moving and meaningful" moments in his life.
For the veterans on today's trip, it was a time for reflection, and for fellowship.
CLOSE CALL
Every armed conflict takes its toll, as the names etched into the black stone of the Vietnam War memorial illustrate.
Many are lost. But sometimes the lost are found again.
Bill Smith was among the latter, a B-25 pilot whose plane was shot down with five men aboard. Two died, one while trying to bail out at low altitude over the water. Smith and the others surmised that crewman had to bail: He was behind the gas tank, and it was afire, burning like a blowtorch.
Smith and his crew flew low-level missions in the Pacific, 50 feet up, strafing enemy targets and dropping bombs, each with a 12-14 second delay so it wouldn't explode too close to the plane.
It was on one of those missions that his plane took a hit from anti-aircraft fire. With his plane aflame, Smith ditched it in the ocean, in rough seas. It was not a smooth landing. Smith, the last man to leave, was blown out of the plane when the fuel tank exploded.
Later there would be time to regret that exit: It burned his mustache off. "I had a good mustache," he recalled today as he sat in the shade of maples lining the walkway toward the Vietnam memorial.
At the time, he had other troubles to consider. He and his two comrades were stranded, clinging to a single parachute in the sea so they would not be separated. For two hours they drifted, until a man named Nathan Gordon, piloting an amphibious Navy aircraft, came to their rescue, landing on the water, hauling them aboard and taking off under enemy fire.
Smith's son, Steven, who later would write a newspaper account of his father's experience, said Gordon made three rescue trips, picking up 15 men, and for that he was awarded the Medal of Honor.
Smith would have other close calls in his years of service. Once a bomb got hung in his plane, hooked in place, a 500 pounder. Smith turned back, headed for the nearest island airfield. "I made the best landing I ever made in my life," he said.
Smith is 88 now. After the war, he went to seminary and became a Baptist minister, for many years serving at Columbus' Rose Hill Baptist Church.
Asked if there were times during the war when he thought he'd never make it home, he said: "There were quite a few, but that's all a part of it."
Smith and the other veterans on the West Georgia Honor Flight were en route to the Iwo Jima memorial shortly after 3 p.m.
THE GRATITUDE OF STRANGERS
It has become a scene so often replayed that if not for its significance, it would seem routine.
A stranger recognizing a veteran by his age and blue Honor Flight T-shirt, walks up and, often with no introduction, says, "Thank you."
It happened to Jerry Short, 83, retired from the Navy, who during World War II served four years in the Army, four in the Army Air Corps, and then re-enlisted in the Navy to serve 14 more years. Escorted by guardian Cathi Kee, a secretary in the Columbus Police Department's robbery and homicide division, Short was resting in a wheelchair at the World War II memorial in Washington, D.C., when a man he'd never met came up.
For his life, and the life of his son, and the way of life they cherish, "I can't thank you enough," said the man, shaking Short's hand.
The stranger later identified himself as Robert Mann, 58, of Armonk, N.Y. "I wish I could thank all of them," he said of World War II veterans. He's Jewish, he said, and he doesn't believe his life would be what it is without the sacrifices veterans made.
As Kee was wheeling Short back to the chartered tour bus outside the memorial, it happened again.
Well, almost.... A woman came up and tried to thank Short, Kee said, but she couldn't get the words out. She started crying.
Honor Flight organizer Royce Ard said expressions of gratitude are neverending, every time a group of veterans makes the trip.
Having left the World War II memorial, the three buses carrying veterans from the West Georgia Honor Flight loaded up and moved on, arriving shortly before 2 p.m. at memorials for Korea and Vietnam. TIME FOR REFLECTION
Every veteran has a story, and not every story’s blood and glory.
Carter Kyser went into the Army July 16, 1941, thinking he’d serve a year and then head off to college, to play baseball. He was assigned to the Army Air Corps, and when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor that December, he knew he was in for the duration of the war.
He was sent off to George Field, along the Wabash River in Illinois, and there he remained, a mechanic working on training aircraft, single-engine AT-6s and twin-engine AT-10s.
He never saw combat, but that’s OK: He’d already come close to death.
At age 8, he was thrown from a car hit by a train in Evergreen, Ala.
“They said I was dead,” the 91-year-old recalled today, as he sat on the West Georgia Honor Flight to Washington, D.C. “They told my mother I wouldn’t make it to the hospital.
His 6-year-old stepbrother, on the other hand, was up and walking around right after the crash. Everyone thought he was uninjured. The next afternoon, he died.
Kyser was in a coma in a Montgomery hospital for three weeks. No one thought he’d make it.
It was all that time he spent unconscious that washed him out of flight school, he said. No one with his medical history could be a pilot. So he became a mechanic.
When George Field came under a new command during the war, most of his buddies transferred out, everyone except him, he said. He went and asked a major why. The major told him he was needed there at the field, that in fact he had “sold” Kyser to another officer for $10 and a fifth of whiskey.
“I said, ‘You got cheated,’” Kyser recalled.
He put in almost five years working on planes, and when they said he could home, he went back to Alabama, where he grew up. “It was a nice ride,” he said, “but I wouldn’t want to do it again.”
He went to Auburn University in 1948, got out in 1951 and started coaching high school teams. He was playing baseball when he met Mary Campbell, whom he married. They had six children, three sons, three daughters. For 56 years they were together, much of that time spent in Macon, Ga., where Kyser coached high school ball.
After retirement, he moved back to Auburn. In 2004, his wife died. When he wrote his autobiography, it was more about her than him. He titled it “My Guardian Angel.”
She died of cancer, he said. She was treated for it, and doctors thought she had beat it. Just three weeks after that, she was told it was hopeless. “She was dead,” Kyser said.
Sometimes when people think you’re going to die, you survive. Sometimes when you think you’re going to survive, you die.
“You never know about life,” he said.
THE GATHERING IN COLUMBUS
By the dawn's early light, 85 World War II veterans came marching into the Columbus Metropolitan Airport, some to the peppy tune "As the Saints Go Marching In," played by the U.S. Army Infantry Band.
There to see them off on today's West Georgia Honor Flight to the World War II memorial in Washington, D.C., were a few local dignitaries, Columbus Mayor Jim Wetherington, Columbus Councilor Wayne Anthony and Harris County Sheriff Jay Jolley.
Also there were about 30 Columbus State University ROTC cadets standing at attention, lining the hall to the airport security screening, where even the veterans had to take off their shoes and surrender their jackets, and in some cases, their canes.
Jim Hall Sr. came in escorted by his son, Jim Hall Jr. As the anticipation of the day's journey had most travelers in a jovial mood, the elder Hall was asked if he'd got any sleep Thursday night.
He had, he said, with just one problem: "My motel rate was too high."
He and his son laughed. "I'm staying with Jim," the father added.
At age 81, the senior Hall is among the younger veterans on this flight. After the war, he went to work for the Boy Scouts of America, retiring in 1989 after 35 years. Over those years, the family moved to 12 different towns, living in 17 different homes.
Eventually Jim Jr. settled in Columbus. The dad said he left his son here in 1966, and now the boy won't move.
The excitement of the morning was infectious, giving the veterans' escorts, or guardians, their own burst of adrenaline.
"I'm totally excited," said Dave Arwood, a local disc jockey, who said he had just spoken to one of the honorees who had spent 30 years in the service and couldn't break some of those old habits: He still got up at the same time every morning, early. The only thing that had changed was that he now was getting up just to use the bathroom and then going back to bed.
This story was originally published April 16, 2010 at 7:13 AM with the headline "Update:West Georgia Honor Flight veterans get big welcome home from area residents."